In Memoriam

William Swinton Young , a son, brother and unknown uncle

In 1916 what were your thoughts as you lay wounded in that field hospital in Boulogne?
Did you believe you were lucky to come out of the battle of the Somme alive to return home?
The Edinburgh Chaplain and the doctors that spoke to you thought you would.
You were well enough to chat to the Chaplain about football and life at home in Edinburgh
But the infected wounds on your legs were too bad in the days before penicillin, and you died unexpectedly. Septicaemia, I guess.

You made a deep impression on the doctors. Grandma got letters from them after you died telling her what a cheery person you were, that the surgeon had sat with you to the last and how sad they were to have lost you.

But what were you really like?
I have seen photographs of you at 16, and you look very like my Mum.
You were her very big brother and a not so big brother to her three sisters.

I've no doubt you were like all big brothers, partly protective and partly a tease.
You got a glowing report from your headmaster at Boroughmuir High School- I've read it, and he says you will succeed in life. Little did he know.

I know you were training to be an engineer, but what sort of engineer? I don't know.
You see I know very little about you. I can only guess that you would have been tall like my mum and artistic, maybe musical as well. I never though to ask your sisters while they were alive. Why not? I wish now I had.

You might have married and had children, my cousins.
You might have done so much but never got the chance.

I remember you today with this blip of a photo of your great great grandnephew, Theo Swinton Hawker laying roses on your grave in Wimereux Communal Cemetery last month while he and his family were on holiday in France.

The poppies have been given to me by His Lordhip's army friend, W.
They crawled together through the jungles of Malaya in their National Service days with the Gordons while fighting the communist insurgents there.
I have reason to be glad that they both came back while others did not.